


Two Monsters Share Moments

by DictionaryWrites



Series: Two Monsters In Space And Time [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Aromantic Loki, Feels, Friendship/Love, Intimacy, Non-Sexual Intimacy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 17:55:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4634757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Assorted ficlets within the Loki & The Doctor universe - not with plots, really, but just isolated moments together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Monsters Share Moments

 “Chocolate. _Chocolate_. How can you not like _chocolate_?” The Doctor's irritation is almost fond, and subsequently Loki does not complain, even as he pushes the broken tablet of chocolate away and lets the Doctor take for himself another square of the stuff.

“I do like chocolate,” Loki says reasonably, and the Doctor shoves him hard in the shoulder with a distinctly rough affection, and Loki laughs; the Doctor is not a rough man, and he does not tumble and wrestle and play as those of Loki's realm do. His planet was of intellectuals, obscenely clever people, too clever to grasp at each other and roll in the mud, laying bruises upon each other's skin as some parody of loving worship. “ _Dark_ chocolate.”

“Chocolate so bitter you can't taste the sweet,” the Doctor says with a sort of low discomfort in his voice, and Loki smiles at him, sweetly. “What's the point in that?”

“Oh, there's every point in that,” Loki says easily, and he reaches up, tracing two fingers over the side of the other man's face. His skin is smooth, this Time Lord's, smooth and warm under the touch of Loki's fingers, and he leans into the touch like a tired cat – he goes for so long without touch, sometimes, despite being so tactile a creature.

“Where to next?” the Doctor asks in a soft voice, and he doesn't wish to disturb Loki's touches – they touch each other with such quiet intimacy, after all, and its impact is strong on each of them. Loki wonders, sometimes, about how that Rose of his must have touched him – not with jealousy, for he has no wish to possess a creature like the Doctor, but merely with quiet curiosity, for he and Loki are merely friends with wandering hands, and they are not lovers. The Doctor and Rose were, though, and Loki cannot help but be curious, for the Doctor must love so, so fiercely, when he loves in such a fashion.

“We've never been to my planet,” Loki says, as if it's a complaint. The Doctor raises an eyebrow at him.

“Do you want to go?” comes the question, filled with a knowledge Loki both adores and loathes with all his icy heart.

“No,” Loki answers. “Never again.” And the Doctor smiles at him in that sad, knowing way of his, and Loki strokes his thumb over the lovely flesh of that ancient cheek. The Doctor's eyes contain fathoms when one looks closely, and Loki does love to look when they're still enough to allow for it. He wishes, sometimes, that that one night he had tried to catch a glimpse of the other man's face, tried to gaze into those deep, deep abysses of doleful brown, but he had not, and never again will he have the chance to look. He hopes so, at least. “May I show you something, Doctor?”

“Show me what?”

Loki shows.

The Doctor arches with a gasp under Loki's fingers, pressing into his hand as he becomes suddenly stiff and grasps at Loki's shoulder, and Loki closes his eyes as his forefingers press so very tightly against the Time Lord's temple, projecting all that he needs to: the Asgardian fields spread broadly in shining gold and burnished red from all manner of flowers and fruits amongst the wheat, and amongst the plant runs forth a laughing child with red, red hair. Freckles spatter across his rounded, pale cheeks and following him comes another, an inch taller and with a straighter chin, with the same freckles but hair of blackest night. Váli was always the prouder child than Narfi.

Váli catches Narfi by his underarms and pulls him backwards, then, and the both of them fall backwards amongst the yellow stalks, laughing with each other, and the view changes: Loki had stepped forwards, smiling down at his children, and he had offered them his hands.

He draws his fingers away from the Doctor's cheek, and he stares at the tears shining oh-so-brightly in those sad, endless eyes: the Doctor peers at him with quiet pain and distant perplexity, and not for the first time Loki curses his soul-destroying empathy. What a ridiculous creature, with such great capacity for feeling the pain of other people.

“Those-”

“Narfi and Váli. My youngest children, my sweetest,” Loki confesses, and then says softly, “Like yours, I think. Killed not for their own crimes, but for that of their father's.” The Doctor almost flinches, leaning slightly away, and Loki draws back his hands, laying them both in his own lap.

There's a long pause.

“You never apologize, do you?” the Doctor asks, not with accusation, but with quiet comprehension: he apologizes all the time, of course. _I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry._

“Not when I don't feel sorry,” Loki says. That's not true, of course. Loki's only ever felt sorry three or four times in his life, but he's apologized far more than that.

“No,” the Doctor agrees, and then says, “Nor do I.” Loki hears the quiet snap of the chocolate bar breaking in his hands, and he presses a row of squares into Loki's hand despite his previous protests: Loki alters the atomic nature of the ghastly sweet in his hand with but a thought, and he ignores the Doctor's groan of protest as he presses a beautifully dark, bitter sweet to his tongue. “I don't know how you can eat that.”

“I've swallowed stars, Doctor. A bit of chocolate hardly does me any bad.” Loki looks forwards and over the city they dangle over, seated on the edge of a building they oughtn't legally be sat upon, likely enough, and he ignores the way the Doctor is staring at him. He can't stand to stare back when the Doctor looks at him with an expression like that, with admiration, with something more than love, deeper-- Loyalty, perhaps, or something like that.

Thor had looked at Loki like that, once.

“We could go to Astorius 6. They worship you there.”

“They worship me in name, yes,” Loki says. “One of sixteen planets that does so.” The Doctor watches him for a second, Loki notes in his periphery.

“How many worship you without knowing your name?” Ah, and there goes the admiration. By his very nature, Loki knows, he repulses this being he calls his friend, for Loki is a point of bright, bright chaos struck all through the Doctor's timely order, and Loki by himself is what the Doctor calls a fixed point in time. He _disgusts_ the Gallifreyan, and yet they stay together – and here, his disgust is amplified, because he remembers, as he so often forgets, what impact Loki has upon the universe.

He does not wish to answer the question. Loki knows every single planet that does, thousands of them, hundreds of them, but he doesn't wish for the Doctor to know of his presence when he views a foreign statute on a far-off world. Loki has worn so many faces, so many more than the Doctor has worn himself – he uses them in a way a moral creature could never even consider. Or at least, he used to. Loki has no morals of his own, but the Doctor rather does enforce them when they travel side-by-side.

“How many worship you?” Loki responds, and the Doctor and Loki stare at each other for a few moments, challenge in both their gazes, in their stiff jaws and firm stares, pursed lips and clenched teeth: Loki thinks, _hopes_ , that perhaps the Doctor will hit him. The Doctor never does hit him. He wouldn't if Loki begged him.

“Let's go then!” the Doctor says with a faux cheer, and he stands up from the roofside. Loki sits there for a few moments more, popping the final piece of chocolate between his lips, and he looks out over the city and its softly yellow lights, his jaw set. He stands, though, shifting his shoulders, and he goes towards the TARDIS before the Doctor catches his arm and holds him fast.

Their faces are so very close together, and the Doctor stares down at him before he says – no, _whispers_ \- “Thank you. For showing me that.”

“You're welcome to my mind, Doctor,” Loki says, perhaps indelicately. “Always.” And he means it. He imagines he will _always_ mean it.

Especially when the Doctor smiles so in response.


End file.
